Owain Westmacott Richards was born on 31 December 1901 in Croydon, the second son of Harold Meredith Richards, M.D., and Mary Cecilia Richards (
née
Todd). At the time H. M. Richards was Medical Officer of Health for Croydon, a post he held until 1912 when he returned to the town of his birth, Cardiff, as Deputy Chairman of the newly formed Welsh Insurance Commission, the forerunner of the Welsh Board of Health. Owain Richards’s grandfather had a hatter’s business in Cardiff, which had been established by his father, who had migrated to Cardiff from Llanstephan in Carmarthenshire (now Dyfed). This great-grandfather was probably the last Welsh-speaking member of the family; his son discouraged the use of Welsh as ‘unprogressive’ and married a non-Welsh speaking girl from Haverfordwest. Harold Richards, being the youngest son, did not inherit the family business. On leaving school he worked for some years in a shipping firm belonging to a relative. He found this uncongenial and in his late twenties, having decided to become a doctor, he attended classes at the newly founded University College at Cardiff. Passing the Intermediate Examination he entered University College London, qualifying in 1891, taking his M.D. and gaining gold medals in 1892 and 1893. He was elected a Fellow of University College London in 1898. As medical practices had, at that time, either to be purchased or inherited, Harold Richards took a salaried post as Medical Officer of Health for Chesterfield and Dronfield (Derbyshire), soon moving to Croydon. After his work at Cardiff, he transferred, in 1920, to the Ministry of Health in London, responsible for the medical and hospital aspects of the Local Government Act, 1929 (Anon. 1943
a, b
). He retired in 1930 and died in 1943. His obituaries recorded that he was ‘excessively shy and modest’, that he always ‘overworked’ and had markedly high standards (Anon. 1943
a, b
). Such comments would be equally true of Owain.
Psychiatry in the 1880s
